While creating a mural on the door of her garage, Marybeth Bethel envisioned a journey she has now achieved. Bethel, photographed with her son, Jesse Bethel, has learned Italian and immersed herself in the culture of Italy. She now makes regular trips to explore the country and plans to return this fall for two months.

After several decades as a therapist and personal coach encouraging others to achieve their dreams, Marybeth Bethel, 58, decided to embark on a similar journey for herself.

“All my adult life I’d dreamed of becoming fluent in another language and immersing myself in another culture,” she explains. “I wanted an adventure on my own in a country I knew little about, where I couldn’t speak the language and didn’t know anyone. I was inspired seeing my son Jesse achieve his childhood dream of living and working full-time in Japan.”

Like many, Bethel’s personal dreams were shelved when life circumstances intervened. She’d enrolled at Kansas University in 1968 but left after three years when she married and had Jesse. She worked in the printing industry, and when she became a single parent, she created opportunities to work from home so she could take care of her son and return to school.

She graduated from KU with a B.A. in psychology in 1986 and an M.S. in counseling psychology in 1991. She started an in-home therapy practice, taught classes on self-growth, volunteered at Headquarters Counseling Center and worked as assistant director for one year.

A random TV travel program inspired her three years ago.

“It was about the Cinque Terre (five villages) area in northern Italy,” she recalls. “I decided that’s where I’d go. Next day I renewed my passport and started planning.”

She joined an online language exchange program to learn Italian and arrived in Cinque Terre in May 2006. She spent a month traveling around Italy, staying mostly in cheap hostels, although she spent time in Parma Palace as the guest of an Italian friend.

“My new Italian friends welcomed me into their homes as if I were family and showed me around their communities,” she says. “It was an advantage to travel on my own and experience culture immersion with native Italians rather than going the usual tourist route.”

The experience was so enriching that she returned home determined to create opportunities to enable her to achieve her goal of spending longer time in Italy. She’s now a professional ACT essay scorer and an adjunct professor for the online American Public University.

“These online jobs fit my travel plans perfectly. With my laptop and Internet connection, I can work from anywhere in the world,” she says.

Bethel has made three more two-month visits to Italy, traveling to places such as Florence, Milan, Rome and Bologna as well as more remote villages. Last fall she stayed with some friends near L’Aquila.

“Thankfully, none of my friends were injured in the devastating earthquake, although the tremors tossed them around in their beds,” she says. “The loss of life was devastating, and many buildings dating back to the 1300s were destroyed.”

She plans to revisit the area on her next two-month fall visit and is already planning to spend four to six months there in 2010.

“When I embarked on this journey at 55, I didn’t know I’d fall so in love with Italy, its language, culture and people,” she says. “The adventure has changed my life and understanding of the world.”